I'm not seeing anything on their page that is, on the face of it, illegal. Certainly, they seem to be getting near the edge of the law, but if they don't cross the line, there's nothing there.
They may be immoral, but the moment you start legislating morality, you open up a can of worms that can't be unopened.
Stratfor may be kind of dumb in some areas, but that doesn't make them a bad company.
I would be a perfect gentleman to my shipmates and go above and beyond the call of duty, when possible, in whatever my job was.
But I'd be the first Total D-Bag on Mars to the rest of Humanity.
I considered it.
I won't pretend it's for mankind or science or anything like that - I'd be doing it because people would remember my name for having done something somewhat insane, with few harmful side-effects. That mankind would benefit or science would benefit is great, but it would be a side-effect.
Because I could carve a plaque that said "I was here first, bitch. Suck on that, you second-place losers." I would do my damndedst to ensure that I was remembered not only as the First Man On Mars, but also biggest, most insufferable d-bag at the same time.
But they'd remember my name.
Better revenge: move to Mars, destroy the Earth.
Way more satisfying.
The inherent non-acceptability of Google Glass was somewhat predicted by Snow Crash over 20 years ago. One of the characters, a "gargoyle" walks around in full-recording mode at all times, trying to capture every bit of information possible. The description, as given, is at best neutral and my takeaway was that it wasn't considered a positive thing by other information gatherers of that world.
Crapflooding ones own info stream is still crapflooding.
Call me when they actually have some compelling content and can be viewed on a device that doesn't guarantee eyestrain trying to pick out details.
I think the broader question is why does the fact that its a game warrant some higher editorial standard. Apple would not block the NYT app if they used it to publish an editorial titled "Assad is a Jerk".
I don't see why a game that happens to portray the same opinion should be looked as different. Also the sort of people who we typically have editorializing about editorials do so because they happen to also be the types that read editorials; if they had any exposure to these games they'd complain about them too. I thought we for the mast part had societal value that considered freedom to express our opinions a virtue? Yes some of them are simplistic, and uniformed. I come back to so what?
I don't think it laudable of Apple to run a market place that actively bars goods and services that happen to express opinions, about real things. Doubly so when its terribly inconsistent about when and on what those rules are actually enforced. Yes they have right to do it; just I chose not to participate.
Because blocking the NYT app doesn't put them on one side or the other of a political crisis where people are living or dying.
Why is it that people who have evaded authorities find it irresistible to gloat about how "clever" they are to have outwitted cops. I get it, maybe eventually talk about it in an autobiography, but he may technically still be evading said authorities. He might as well say, "nanna nanna booboo, come and get me!".
He's monologuing. That's the downfall of every evil villain.
In this case, he's probably more of a rich, paranoid nutbag than anything. Innocent until proven guilty and all that, but he's not helping his case any and I'm not going to vouch for the authorities in Belize, either.
You had me at "terminate the spammers".
With a goddamn axe.
As a Mac user I know the feeling, but what would you even acquire by trying to game on Linux? There is Macs for unixy world and it has better support than Linux will ever will. Of course Windows is the best platform but mostly because they have things like XNA and
The only good thing about this is the feeling that maybe Mac ports become more frequent too, but I'm not putting lot into that hope as far as Linux support goes.
Valve isn't the problem here - they've been good about bringing their AAA content to Mac and keeping it supported. I expect that they will continue to do the same with Linux.
The problem is that they are the distributors (through Steam) for a bunch of publishers that aren't Mac friendly. However, this gives them a reason to change, if they want to. Some of them can't afford to, some of them just won't and some of them will even be dickbags about it.
A lot of those same publishers are willing to be completely mediocre in their support and decide that supporting Windows is enough. Valve apparently looked at the situation, said "Windows 8 WTF" and is moving to expand their offerings so that maybe one day they can laugh in Ballmer's balloon-shaped face.
> Then don't worry about it because the rate of error propagation due to aging for physical media is orders of magnitude greater than that of media stored on the Internet.
The rate of corporate revocation of access rights to cloud-based storage is much higher than the rate of bitrot at the moment. Amazon is awesome, but they won't be around forever. My Britney Spears collection (when I say Britney Spears, I mean King Crimson) will be safely enjoyed by my spawn, whereas I'm pretty sure my bad sci-fi novel collection won't be (no matter how you slice it).
No, but I can imagine a change to the legal system limiting the liability of the manufacturers of self-driving cars.
If we could know that self-driving cars reduce accidents by 95% (a not unrealistic amount), it would be morally wrong for us to not put them on the road. If the only hurdle the manufacturers had left was the liability issue, then it would be morally wrong for Congress to not change the laws.
Of course, Congress has been morally bankrupt since, oh, about 1789, so I doubt that they'll see this as an imperative. On the other hand, I do imagine the car makers paying lobbyists and making campaign contributions to ensure that self-driving car manufacturers are exempted from these lawsuits, so it could still happen.
If corporations have the same rights as people in our framework of laws, why should they not be subject to the same penalties, including the death penalty (in those jurisdictions that have it)? By limiting the liability of a corporation, you are placing a higher value on it's survival than an actual person.
Limited liability is fine, as long as the corporation is viewed as a collection of persons who can be held individually responsible for malfeasance, but the moment you equate the corporation to a person, in any sense, it should suffer the same consequences along with the privileges.
There are people who wait and watch and see intentional discrimination even where none exists.
Your white privilege is showing.
Your bias against whites is showing.
Thing is, those people who watch and wait aren't confined to one racial group. They're all over the place.
My bias is more against people who just want to be dicks.
Like you.
At some point, I stopped and realized that it is NOT a good thing to have things centralized and beyond your control. It IS better to own a book which is YOUR copy which does NOT change or disappear. Just as you should own your local music and not stream it from some "cloud". And the same goes for a lot of things.
To an extent, I agree.
I find that electronic books are fine for throwaway fiction - books that, for whatever reason, will only be read and if they were lost, I wouldn't care. But for reference books, I prefer hard copies that I can browse thru at my leisure, leave open on a desk or quickly flip between sections.
The same goes for music. A lot of it is stuff that I'll listen to once or twice, but wouldn't miss it otherwise. For things that I want future generations to know about, I get a more permanent format.
You'll end up with a starkly divided society: the wealthy class, who can afford new houses, and cars, and to start new businesses, and the underclass who cannot afford a house or a car because they cannot get a decent job because they cannot afford an education because everybody's got their money locked up in their bank vaults appreciating instead of out backing student loans, small business loans and mortgages.
We're scary close that situation now. A lot of people in the US live paycheck-to-paycheck without any real spare money to spend (yet they spend it anyway). It's not really the fault of the rich, it's more the fault of corporations who went nuts selling everyone credit and the fault of people who bought into that credit without thinking through the long term effects.
"No matter where you go, there you are..." -- Buckaroo Banzai
